Johannesburg - Nissan South Africa is conducting a feasibility study into the possible production in South Africa of its new vehicle for the taxi industry.
The new taxi vehicle will be launched next month and marks Nissan SA’s re-entry to the local taxi market.
Thabo Smouse, a Nissan SA spokesman, said yesterday that the new taxi vehicle would be launched as a fully imported vehicle from Japan, but that a feasibility study was being done into the possibility of producing the vehicle at Nissan SA’s plant in Rosslyn near Pretoria.
The Department of Trade and Industry launched a new programme in 2011 to encourage the local assembly of minibus taxis.
Toyota South Africa Motors is already assembling its Quantum bus and Ses’fikile taxi vehicle at its plant in Prospecton in Durban.
Leo Kok, the spokesman for Toyota SA, said 80 percent of the model line for these vehicles was being assembled from imported kits on a separate production line in its Hino truck assembly area.
Kok said Toyota SA’s next step was to move to full manufacturing of these vehicles but was not in a position at this stage to comment on when that would happen.
Nissan SA unveiled its new NV350 Impendulo taxi vehicle last week.
Mike Whitfield, the managing director of Nissan SA, said the company’s previous taxi vehicle, the Nissan E20 model, was discontinued in 2006 and was a market leader in the taxi market.
“The NV350 taxi is an attractive public transport alternative, offering style, space, comfort and fuel efficiency, and we fully expect it will have a similar impact when it gains a foothold in the market after its launch in March,” he said.
The new model has been specifically tailored for the South African market to comply with taxi recapitalisation programme legislation and SA Bureau of Standards and National Regulator for Compulsory Specifications regulations.
Norihiko Yagi, Nissan Motor’s NV350 chief product specialist, who was responsible for ensuring the model’s global competitiveness in the various markets it currently served, including the key African markets of Nigeria and Angola, said extensive research had gone into the development of the Nissan NV350 for the South African market and it had undergone strict testing both in South Africa and in Japan. - Business Report